Where the Sky Meets the Sea
by inkedinserendipity
Summary: Maui wonders how, exactly, Moana has gotten so far across the ocean while knowing so little about sailing. She doesn't even have a word for the horizon.


One thing Maui hates about the open ocean is its unacceptable lack of shade. On his thousand-year vacation home, at least there were cool caves to which he could retreat when the sun got particularly brutal. (Sometimes, he's convinced that giant ball of light is just being petty and trying to enact revenge for him slowing it down. Speedy little nuisance.) But out here, surrounded by nothing but waves and waves and waves and the spray off those same damned waves, there's no reprieve from the heat.

One thing Maui likes about this journey, though - of which there are very, very few, he'd like to state, for the record (though not the scoreboard, because his traitorous smaller self has overwritten that one practically deifying the girl - the _child_ \- he's sailing with) - is that with the princess minding the stays, Maui can do a fair bit of relaxing. "Wayfinders endure anything," he'd thrown over his shoulder that morning, before promptly flopping face-down on the deck.

He's still pretty surprised the ocean hadn't sent some leftover Kakamora dart toward his nose for that particular comment. He's not sure if it's because the ocean knows he'd dodge this time, or if it's ignoring him in favor of Princess.

Probably that last one. She's been nattering on for the past half-hour about this whole epic voyage. And hey, as much as he appreciates her rescue from Tamatoa - no, really, one-hundred percent sincerely - she talks _so. Much_. Everything is a Gods-damned novelty to this particular Chief's daughter. It's like she's never been out on the ocean before.

But, because Maui is a gracious demigod, he'll let her have her amusement. So long as she gets her beauty rest at _some_ point, he'll be a-okay. Though however he tries to pretend he's ignoring her - whoops, however he ignores her, and definitely succeeds - something keeps irking at him.

There she goes again. He sighs.

"It's called a horizon, Princess," he grunts, unwilling to expend the effort to look up at her. Sweat beads uncomfortably on his forehead then trickles down his nose, and with a resigned groan, he lets it.

She cuts off mid-sentence, and there's a quiet splash as the ocean becomes nothing more than water and salt once more. "Huh?" she asks.

"Horizon. Her-eyes-un. That's what it's called."

"That's what what's called?"

As Maui takes a couple of seconds to process that question, Moana scooches from her side of their craft toward him. She yelps at the sideways motion as the boat lurches with the sudden redistribution of weight. He stifles a laugh, but only because he owes her for saving his "hiney" from ol' Glittershell a couple of days ago. That's the only reason.

"The horizon," he says again, and groans as he rolls onto his back. The wood against his skin is painfully hot without the shadow of his incredibly toned body to cool it. He debates rolling back over, but decides against it. How could he deprive her of his amazingly good-looking face?

He flops a hand toward the sea, gesturing in the direction of the horizon. "That thing. You keep calling it 'the line where the sky meets the sea', and I get it, Princess, you royalty like to flap your big mouths where people can hear you. But substituting eight words where you could use one is pretty unnecessary."

In his peripheries, her face flickers with confusion. "There's a word for that?" she whispers, voice tinged with awe.

Suddenly uncomfortable at her voice, Maui shifts into a half-sitting position, leaning against his elbows, finally wiping his forehead. Gross. "Uh, yeah," he replies in his best _duh, Princess_ tone of voice. "Using all those extra words just makes you sound pretentious. It's not a good look on you, Princess. On me, on the other hand -"

"First of all," she interrupts shamelessly. "I'm not a princess. I am the daughter of the Chief." She puts her hands on her hips, an incredible feat for someone sitting on a wooden craft in burning midday. "And second, how do I know you're not making that word up?"

Maui eyes her suspicion with incredulity. "Making it up? Why would I - wait, have you never heard that word before?"

"Of course not!" she replies defensively. "When would I have heard it?"

"The last time you were on a boat!"

Princess must make some sort of connection, because light flashes in her eyes. Then, with wide eyes fixed toward the horizon - he can see her turning the word over in her head, lips moving along with it - she sits herself next to him.

"Her-izon," she says to herself, and he stares.

"Uh, yeah. More stress on the 'i', though. Uh - you've really, um, always just called it," he uses his fingers to draw air-quotes, "'the line where the sky meets the sea'?"

"Yep." Her face scrunches up. "Horizon?"

"You got it, Princess."

"Horizon," she mutters to herself, rolling her tongue. "Hor- _i_ -zon. Horizon." She turns to him and beams, and he grins back a small bit before remembering who he's talking to. "I like the word."

"It's your people who came up with it," he tells her gruffly, flapping a hand awkwardly at her.

She chuffs a small laugh and mirrors him, leaning back on her arms and crossing her legs in front of herself. The one good thing about having her this close to him is that her shadow falls over his hand. This way, at least, his fingers don't permanently feel like the sun's trying to fry them off his palms. Otherwise, he would totally be protesting.

"My village doesn't sail," she says quietly.

He's halfway through an absent nod when his brain catches up with his ears. "Wait, what?"

Rudely ignoring him, she continues like she hasn't heard a word. "The people on my island - we don't sail." She tucks her knees into her chest, moving her shadow off his hand. "We haven't for a thousand years," she explains ruefully.

He notices with a jolt that she's not looking at him. Moana, fearless Moana, Princess of Motunui, refusing to make eye contact with him? The thought doesn't sit well with him.

When it becomes apparent he's got nothing to say, she sighs quietly and brushes her hair out of her face. "We never leave the reef. My father forbid it - and his father before him, and his mother before him, and her father before her. All the way back for a thousand years. That's what my grandmother told me."

He has nothing to say, so he says "Oh."

He supposes he deserves her ignoring him. "My grandmother was the only one who remembered who we were. She alone on the island knew that - that we used to be _voyagers_." Moana speaks the word reverentially, eyes closing for a brief moment, and the sight stirs something that tastes uncomfortably like sympathy in Maui's chest. Mini-Maui's probably leaping for joy. "I...I don't think she knew that word, either. Horizon." Then, even more softly, "I wonder what else we've forgotten."

 _I'll teach you_ , his treacherous mouth almost says, before he stops that thought right in its tracks. There's no way he's teaching this - this _little girl_ more than she already knows about wayfinding. He'll get her to Te Fiti and then let her find her own way home. A practical, of sorts. If she makes it all the way back, she gets to keep her knowledge. If she doesn't - well, if her island was landlocked for a thousand years, they can stand a couple more, he guesses.

The look in her eyes as she gazes out toward the horizon isn't sad, per se. There's determination, as there always is with Moana - that's nothing new; but there's a hint of melancholy, wistfulness combined with awe, and maybe, if he squints, a bit of grief.

He has to be misreading that. He's out of practice reading mortal facial expressions. What's she got to mourn, anyway, a way of life she never really even knew?

There's an itch against his chest, and Maui rolls his eyes. There's Mini-Maui again, acting up. Probably wants him to say something consoling. Except Moana doesn't need consoling, he wants to remind his miniature self pointedly, she's _tough_.

"Anyway," she says with a small laugh, that grief disappearing right before his eyes, "thanks for teaching me that, at least."

He wants to protest that he wasn't really teaching, more belittling - can't have her thinking he has a soft heart or anything - or maybe launch into an improvised rendition of his welcome song, complete with capsizes and launching little girls off boats into an ocean far too wide for them to cross alone.

Instead, his traitor mouth says, "Any time, Curly."

She frowns at him. "Curly?"

He freezes. "Uh, your hair's acting up," he replies, scrambling for a reason why he'd dropped the nickname _Princess_ and reverted to the one he'd used before he'd realized she was daughter of the Chief.

She runs a hand through her hair, then squints at him, confused. Then, thankfully, she takes his feeble excuse at face value with a shrug. Lifting herself fully to her feet, Moana strides across their craft to stand at the prow. She sticks her arm out to the sun, peering down her outstretched forearm like she would the shaft of a bow, then recoils as the heat of the sun burns into her eyes.

After a moment's consideration, she goes to adjust the sail, wrestling with the halyard. She's doing it wrong - her knot's way too loose and there's not enough slack between the sail and the stake - and Maui knows he should really correct her. Or at least say something scathing to set her on the right track. But right now, his traitor mouth isn't good for doing much other than gaping.

There's a subdued itching on his chest that Maui hasn't felt in, um, an uncomfortably long time. Feels like a go-Maui fistpump, which means that his infernal conscience, at least, thinks he did something right, dusting off that old nickname. "Hush," he hisses in the general direction of his chest, unwilling to look away from the horizon and definitely unwilling to look at Moana.

All alone in a village full of landbound mortals, huh? He - well, he hadn't realized. In his defense, it's not like she'd _told_ him - he'd just figured that she was exceptionally bad at sailing.

Which, now that he thinks about it, makes no sense. Moana has a knack for sailing unique among all the mortals Maui's met. It goes more than determination and grit, though she has those in heaps larger than the gold in Tamatoa's lair. More, even, than her friendship with the ocean. It's something innate, something that lets her _feel_ when they're off-course, with just a glance toward the stars.

A couple more months and an actual, motivated teacher, Maui realizes, and she could become an expert wayfinder.

He shies away from that realization like it's on fire. Nope. Not happening.

Regardless, there's no way she was the bad egg in village full of voyagers. And that brings up a very alarming thought.

Why would the village send _her_? No, why would the _ocean_ send her? What was so important, so pressing, that she had to leave her comfortable life on her island, her home?

He can count on one hand the number of mortals that would even _think_ about crossing the ocean, alone, without training. And he can count on one finger the number of mortals that actually would.

"Princess," he says quietly to himself, knowing she's too far away to hear anything he says. Inadvertently, he pulls a face. It just...doesn't fit. The word is too light, too whimsical, on his tongue, for someone like Moana.

Curly, he thinks - the staccato at its beginning, the concise feel of it in his mouth - that fits her much better.

He sighs to himself, scrubs at his face. He's getting sentimental in his old age. Honestly, he's aged more in these past two weeks than in those thousand cursed years on that island.

"I'll teach you," he offers to himself, trying those words on for size - and to his dismay, he finds that they resonate perfectly.

Another bump on his chest means that Mini-Maui's probably pulled coconut-leaf pom-poms off one of the tattoos on his back. Maui rolls his eyes. "You're not helping."

But he gets to his feet. He crosses the boat. He stands right behind her and clears his throat. She jumps and pointedly does not screech, though it's a close thing. He stifles a roaring laugh.

Maui clears his throat again and unwinds the fraying knot she's secured. "Try it like this, Curly," he suggests, and the nickname settles comfortably on his tongue. In a few deft movements, he re-knots the rope around its stake; then he demonstrates again, slower. Then he undoes the knot and passes the end of the rope off to her.

It takes her a couple of tries, sure. But she gets it after four or five attempts. And when she gets it right, she beams at him, all full of pride and joy and light, so far from the melancholy that plagued her voice earlier.

That, Maui can't help but think, makes this teaching thing worthwhile.


End file.
